Jean Bethke Elshtain

If you visit Edinburgh, you can visit the famous statue of Bobby that sits near the south entrance to Greyfriars Kirkyard at the southern end of the George IV Bridge. When his master died, the Skye Terrier continued to make their daily rounds, visiting the pub on the way, and then entering the . . . . Continue Reading »

Over three decades ago, the phone rang in my office at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where I was then teaching in the department of political science. A powerful, resonant baritone voice introduced the caller as Richard Neuhaus. He was calling, he said, to invite me to a meeting in New . . . . Continue Reading »

American Providence: A Nation with a Mission by Stephen H. Webb Continuum. 173 pp. $22.95 Perhaps Stephen Webb should have added a question mark after the word mission in the subtitle of his brisk and engaging book, American Providence: A Nation with a Mission . But perhaps he did not . . . . Continue Reading »

Stanley Hauwerwas and Paul J. Griffiths Jean Bethke Elshtain is rightly admired for her courage, for her trenchant critiques of peculiarly American pathologies, and for the wisdom of her political judgment. We think, however, that her current attempt morally to justify the Bush presidency’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Part I: Paul J. Griffiths Proselytism is a topic enjoying renewed attention in recent years. This is largely because it is increasingly obvious that religious commitments and conflicts are and will remain central to the reconfiguration of global politics that began in 1989. Understanding the . . . . Continue Reading »

Abraham Lincoln & the Last Best Hope Jean Bethke Elshtain Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 97 (November 1999): 43-47. The beginning of the ninth century of the millennium now almost past was promising enough. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 marked, at long last, the end of the Napoleonic wars and . . . . Continue Reading »

Raymond Aron: The Recovery of The Political By Brian C. Anderson Rowman & Littlefield. 215 pages, $58 cloth, $19.95 There has been a resurgence of interest in Raymond Aron in France, though the English-speaking world takes less notice of him than it ought. Brian C. Anderson attributes the new . . . . Continue Reading »

Sin and the Fall are what make government necessary. As such, government is not that which helps the human person to flourish, and Luther insists on the restraints and limits of government. Government is indeed, Bonhoeffer declares, “independent of the manner of its coming into being.” It is . . . . Continue Reading »

Books about Hannah Arendt have been proliferating at a brisk pace. Now there is a new book by Arendt herself, a collection of pieces that span the tumultuous twenty-five year period from 1930 to the mid-fifties. It does boggle the mind. Nazism, fascism, Stalinism, the beginning of the Cold War, the . . . . Continue Reading »